30 comments:

GOP needs to smarten up. They need to focus on data and knowledge. This focus on abortion, religion, etc. is what a Dinosaur would have done with the meteor came. The next meteor will be the next election day for the next POTUS.

If the Filipino ruling classes wouldn't have had such a bee in their bonnet about kicking out the Americans, the Philippines would now have both Clark Airfield & Subic Bay available as an airfield, a port, staging areas, and a ready source of medical personnel.

Well, not any more. I guess the Filipino powers-that-be thought the Americans raised the price of domestic servants & hookers too much.

Actually, there are probably more similarities between New Orleans and the Philippines than we admit. Corruption, check. Ignorance about risk, check. Incompetence of local officials, check.

I flew into New Orleans the day after Hurricane Ivan (2004) missed the city. It had swerved east at the last minute and hit Pensacola. There were NO precautions or preparation visible in New Orleans. No boarded up windows. Nothing.

Katrina came the next year.

Mississippi got hit as hard and you never read about it. Haley Barbour was governor and the state solved its own problems. New Orleans was like a big nest of baby birds.

YoungHegelian said...If the Filipino ruling classes wouldn't have had such a bee in their bonnet about kicking out the Americans, the Philippines would now have both Clark Airfield & Subic Bay available as an airfield, a port, staging areas, and a ready source of medical personnel.

And the mutual defense treaty they let expire at the same time would cover their asses when the Chinese sniff around their offshore islands....

The Katrina challenge consisted mainly of an intransigent Democratic governor and an incompetent Democratic mayor.

America's Politico:

Ignore abortion? A human life evolves from conception to death. Do you support termination of a human life without cause or due process? Abortion is the denial of our unalienable right to life. Its normalization represents a human rights violation on an unprecedented scale. Treating human life as property is degenerate.

As for religion, it's a philosophy of morality. The vast majority of people are religious. The minority which rejects moral constraints, or adheres to them selectively, are prevented from running amuck by empowered competing interests.

Bullshit. About 80% of the city evacuated for Ivan. It took me 8 hours to drive from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, where I evacuated to. The evacuation routes were modified based on that experience and the next year for Katrina (where 90+% of the population of New Orleans evacuated because we were warned the levees would fail) it only took me four hours to get to Baton Rouge (normally an hour and a half drive)

Has there been a good study comparing, empirically, the response to Katrina and the response to Sandy?Was Bush's response any worse?How does the response in Mississippi to Katrina compare with that of NJ and NY to Sandy? How are the folks in Staten Island, and other such places doing nowadays compared to similarly situated folks on the Gulf coast?

Back when Bush was president, and Clinton before him, and Bush senior, and Reagan and even Carter, the US knew how to get the Navy and Air Force in motion to get relief supplies on the way. That's the thing that has startled me the most about the aftermath of Heiyan is that I have not seen any stories about America's efforts to send relief supplies. What's up with this administration?

In response to Young Hegelian, Clark is still an active air base -- just not a military one anymore -- and Subic Bay can still land container ships. We could help, if this administration wanted to.

When the US left Clark, they gave it to the Filipino government. The government did nothing to guard it and it was looted to the point that toilets were taken up & wiring ripped out of wall.

The Americans learned their lesson, and stripped Subic Bay of anything of value before they turned it over.

Are both ex-bases still there & marginally functional? Yes, but nothing like their former glory. Now, short of a major war, there's no way in hell that the US would ever build a base like Subic Bay again overseas.

This is serious, not snarky: my customary response in the past to these sorts of disasters had been to make a cash donation to the Red Cross. Read a book not long ago, With Charity for All, describing the multiple ways in which charities are mismanaged and aid doesn't actually get through, or make the difference it should. Every time I see imagines of people with Red Cross blankets I'm reminded of this -- why would the Red Cross need to put their logo on these blankets? And they certainly came in for plenty of criticism at Hurricane Sandy, with claims that they were more interested in the PR than in providing help. (There was an older book specifically about aid in the Third World, and the large quantities siphoned off due to bribery, etc., whose title I don't recall.)

@YoungHegelian, if the runways aren't cratered we can land C5's and C17's. If we can land C5's and C17's, we can send relief funds. We can bring in the tents and mobile hospitals -- they're all palletized these days -- needed to treat the injured and house refugees (and our own service personnel).

Subic was always a very limited base. Small anchorage and limited room for cargo handling. There are far better places to unload in Luzon and elsewhere in the Philippines. The country does have substantial international trade, and several fine ports.

The sticking point in this case is not about dumping relief supplies in Luzon though. Luzon was not the target. The real problem is in a bunch of smaller islands, many of which have no good ports or have damaged port facilities. What could really be useful is amphibious shipping - the WWII style LST's, etc. The Philippine Navy actually has a considerable number of these, and if the US had retained Subic presumably the US would have some, there, also. But at the moment most of these ships are not there and it takes about two-three weeks to get them there from Hawaii and San Diego.

We can bring in the tents and mobile hospitals -- they're all palletized these days -- needed to treat the injured and house refugees (and our own service personnel).

Let's hope so. Don't take my criticism of the short-sighted pissiness of the Filipino ruling class as indicating any sort of desire to see the Filipino people suffer. We have always had a "special relationship" with them, and they see us as their sometimes overbearing big brother, but family none the less. We need to step up to the plate and help them up, because they're in a world of hurt.

I plan to donate to Catholic Charities, since it's a Catholic country & they probably have established charitable infrastructure. They also get much more bang out of the charitable buck than the Red Cross.

For some reason, the US insists on placing a priority on huge, heavy pallets of bottled water when it sends military aid in. Which very few of those affected are, or can be, helped by. You have no real means of supplying 100s of thousands with helicopters and ships straining to get water bottles in that can only supply a few thousand. Better they just get high capacity water purification portable plants they can fly in, collect when they are done, for the next natural disaster.

At least the people outside NOLA don't think it is an unforgivable humanitarian disaster and death wish on them if the US fails to deliver all the ice they want and disposable diapers.

After the Indonesian tsunami, people there were dumping the water from the "hero helicopter crews" since it was raining most days - and filling the empty bottles up with rice from aid centers because food was a problem. Not water.

In Japan, after that Tsunami, the impacted Japanese communities had plenty of water, but faced 30 - 40 deg temperatures and no gas or electricity to cook with. They told the US military and Japanese SDF that while the tens of thousands of water bottles were a gift that they appreciated because the Americans meant well ---please----no more water bottles. Kerosene would be really nice for the heaters most Japanese have for emergencies. And relief crews clearing roads and getting electricity back even nicer. No water bottles...spare bulldozers and electric lineman much appreciated!!

Seeing Red said...Cedarford, we have aircraft carriers. How much water can 1 make a day?

Fill up tanks.

===================As I understand the carrier capacities, not a expert since I was AF but I have toured one...roughly, enough to supply crew and ships equipment needs, with a 60% margin.Distillation from seawater.Or enough water for 5-7,000 besides the crew and equipment needs less the obstacles of off-loading it from ships and trucking it in...or again, having helos flying off straining to bring in heavy tanks full of water.

Typically, the problem is not lack of water, it is contamination by germs and other nasty stuff, like raw sewage..

Which is why airlifting in or trucking in portable water purification plants with a crew to operate it is far cheaper, and can supply 60-80,000 people for large units with smaller and lighter ones that get 800 gallons per hour.

I have no affiliation with this group but I found them when I was similarly conflicted over a desire to help after the 2004 tsunami. It appears to be a very direct, targeted relief effort to provide shelter and essentials for people displaced by natural and manmade disasters.

@vza, I find it hard to accept your assertion, since there's been nothing about it anywhere in the news. And I'd have to believe that if it was happening it would be regarded as favorable to Obama and therefore newsworthy.